


i'll send you my love on a wire

by orphan_account



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 13:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12411264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: By the time he realizes he’s missing something, he’s already gone.





	i'll send you my love on a wire

**Author's Note:**

> the folks posting in the [torres/bishop tag](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/torres-x-bishop) ultimately inspired this
> 
> sorry for any typos
> 
> title from [brie larson's cover of metric's black sheep](https://yangbeladonna.tumblr.com/post/165461410742/brie-larson-black-sheep)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_o._ **

By the time he realizes he’s missing something, he’s already gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_i._ **

There was nothing there in the beginning. No hint, no warning, nothing.

On Monday, there’s nothing; when Tuesday, there’s something. That’s the only way it can be articulated—and Nick isn’t one to be caught off guard by, well, _anything_ , let alone things like this.

On Monday morning, a petty officer gets shot in the back over an embezzlement deal gone wrong in the bowels of an aircraft carrier. That afternoon, he and Bishop corner a corpsman—the petty officer’s suspected partner—and the guy shoves a teetering tower of crates filled with supplies, which falls on Torres; a shot goes off—then another. Torres comes up for air to find the corpsman on the floor, clutching at his shoulder—and opens his mouth to congratulate Bishop, but when he turns his head, he sees her pressing a red hand against a growing dark spot on the arm of her coat. Any smile that was about to surface is wiped from his face. In the evening, Ducky assures them it’s nothing but a flesh wound, and they all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Gibbs orders her to go home and get some rest.

That’s supposed to it.

But—like anything else in this line of work—Tuesday comes along, and Nick feels an unexpected twinge in his chest when he clocks in and sees that she isn’t behind her desk.

He chalks it up to regular coworker-friendly concern, and accepts Quinn’s offer to meet up with Bishop for drinks when she, Nick, and McGee are the only ones in the elevator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_ii._ **

It doesn’t take long for the bullet wound to heal; Bishop’s back in less than two days, having succeeded in avoiding getting benched by getting at least twenty-four hours of rest. And it’s just another day, really—and then the weeks of September begin to bleed together. It’s not that the job’s boring—it could never be that—but it’s the same cycle repeated through the beginning of October—and, just like always, the pattern breaks. The cycle is disrupted, and turned on its head.

Nick takes point during an interview with a tobacco-spitting mechanic in the motor pool with Bishop trailing behind him; Quinn and McGee are speaking with the base commander with the Gibbs. It feels like everything else has these past few weeks—but then Bishop flicks a cracked windshield to put an emphasis on her question—“are you _sure_ you don’t have any clue as to where the missing marine might have gone?” And the mechanic’s jaw clenches; his fist around the wrench in his hand tightens. And the rest is automatic, though so, so subtle: Nick moves just enough to keep Bishop out of this loser’s line of sight, putting himself between his fellow NCIS agent and this guy—

The mechanic scoffs and turns away. When they’re heading back to the car, Bishop rolls her eyes and assures Nick that the guy was too chicken to make a move on an armed federal agent in front of witnesses when his credibility was being questioned. She smiles, bumps his shoulder—and he wonders if she _knows_ he’s thinking about the time on the carrier where she got shot and he hadn’t done anything until it was too late but to apply pressure to stem the bleeding—

Nick shakes his head; that was weeks ago. Bishop—and everyone else—are past it now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_iii._ **

A marine goes AWOL. His place looks ransacked, and there’s blood in the barracks. When Nick goes with Bishop and Quinn to check out a piece of property the missing corporal’s parents own, they show up and get out of the car—only to hear the revving on an engine from the other side of the rundown, cracked-window cabin. Nick is fast—he’s _always_ been fast—but his eyes dart to Bishop of their own accord, then—

“Look out!”

And he’s knocked sideways just as a sedan roars past him—coming within inches of him as Quinn lets off a shot, then two, then three—but it’s gone seemingly as soon as it appeared. He hears Bishop say, “you’re _welcome_ , Nick,” and looks over to watch her get to her feet. The look she gives him is wry as he picks himself off the ground. He got the wind knocked out of him, sure, but he feels lightheaded—feels like laughing for a split second before coming back to himself, to the present, to the fact that a car nearly ran him over and whoever was at the cabin—probably the marine—is now in the wind.

It hits him on the way back, but Nick waits until he’s by himself in the elevator on the way down to autopsy to lean against the wall and let out a breath he feels like he’s been holding since Bishop pushed him into the backseat of the car so she could ride shotgun with Quinn after he offered to make it up to her by teaching her how to drive evasively.

It’s that twinge again, deep in his chest, behind his ribs. It’s not an ache, or a pain; it’s not discomfiting—but it’s _something_ , and he can’t remember exactly if it’s brand-new or if it’s been there the whole time. He thinks about Quinn quipping that he seems to be a little off his game—“you tired or something, Nick?”—and straightens his spine just before the elevator doors pull open.

The feeling doesn’t fade on its own this time; it’s so persistent that he has to push it down before he reaches Ducky and Palmer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_iv._ **

Bishop and him never go out for drinks. Not alone. Well—there was one time, but that wasn’t a thing. They hadn’t been… _together_ -together. Coworkers catching drinks after work is normal. But there’s a particularly gloomy November night where Quinn has to get home early to look after her mother, McGee and Delilah have a private date planned for later that evening, and Gibbs stays behind with Ducky, leaving Abby and Palmer to head off to Abby’s favorite bowling abbey.

In the elevator, Torres isn’t really thinking when he asks, “want to get a drink?” And Bishop’s got this faraway look kin her eye when she nods and hums noncavitary. They take her car—he says he expected nothing less from her and she asks him if he’d rather spend the drive in the trunk instead of the passenger seat next to hers—and they head off to a bar they know other NCIS agents go to. Drinking in familiar company, and all that—something someone might have said to him at one point while he was undercover.

She nurses a vodka while he opts for standard-label beer; it isn’t awkward, and they get to talking after they’ve had a few sips of their respective drinks. Then, all of a sudden, it’s an hour later, and Bishop is telling him about how _annoying_ her brothers are because they won’t stop asking if she’s seeing anybody. She’s rambling on about patterns and sequences and how _predictable_ her brothers are, so why in the world would she tell them anyway—just so they could come to D.C. like they did the last time and interrogate everyone she knew because they said it was for her own good? “I don’t think so,” she says curtly, scrunching up her nose as she crunches an ice cube between her teeth, and Nick finds that he’s leaning very, very close to her. Not _flirty_ close to her, but it’s close.

“So don’t tell them,” he says, as if it’s obvious, “when you _are_ seeing someone.”

“You’ve only met my brothers once,” Bishop says, and he remembers when he told them she wasn’t his type, that Reeves was—

And it occurs to him, then, that while her brothers may have one wild sense when it comes to their sister and her dating life, they couldn’t tell that he had been lying. Hell, _he_ hadn’t been able to tell at the time. He thought it was true, and now? _Now_ …

“I have a bet with McGee,” Bishop goes on, “next time I date someone, thirty bucks says it takes less than a week for the news to reach my brothers—somehow, somewhere, ‘cause they _always_ know. Hey—Nick—are you even listening to me?” She jabs him with her finger. He’s got his chin resting in his hand; he’s nodding along and smiling at what she’s saying; and it _looks_ like he’s not listening, he _knows_ it looks like he isn’t—but he is. He really, really is. Of _course_ he is.

“Just you wait,” Bishop says, faux-miserable, “they’ll be here within _days_ next time it happens.” She makes a face and slurps the last of her vodka up.

Nick laughs at her, but he feels that twinge—that _twist_ —in his chest again. He drinks half of another beer just to drown the feeling out. He isn’t drunk—neither of them are—but he figures that he should stop soon to avoid the hangover that just might be there in the morning. But Bishop won’t let him be.

She ends up driving him home. When he manages to get inside his apartment and throw his short in the corner, he’s unguarded and light; he doesn’t think twice about the fact that he pictures her laughing at him when his head hits the pillow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_v._ **

The following Monday, a marine’s killer reaches for his gun in the parking lot outside of a decrepit diner that’s been closed for years. Bishop’s gun has been kicked away from her; there’s a cut on her temple that’s bleeding profusely—the asshole stopped her from arresting her by hitting her with the closest thing he could get his hand on.

Gibbs takes the shot before anyone else can think to pull the trigger. It’s over in less than a second, but time doesn’t start moving again until Nick finds her Sig and hands it to her; the smile he gets in return is bright enough to blind him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_o._ **

Nick wakes up in the middle of the night; he comes out of a dream and sits up, scrubbing a hand across his face. The picture of Bishop reaching out a hand to help him off the ground is fading in his mind’s eye, but the thing in his chest is _not_.

It takes him a moment to come to the realization that there is not something _in_ his chest; rather, something is _gone_. For a while now, too. He remains still in the silence of his bed until he acknowledges that what’s missing is with _her_ now.

The only thing left to do is see if she’ll keep it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
